Raiser’s Edge 7.92 – New Features and Functionalities

Raiser’s Edge 7.92 – New Features and Functionalities

With the latest release of Raiser’s Edge, Blackbaud has introduced a number of very positive changes that will enhance your use of Raiser’s Edge and simplify the daily tasks of your team members.

While a few of the upgrades are found within the Admin/Config areas of Raiser’s Edge, most of the changes will impact the way average users utilize Raiser’s Edge, so let’s review some of the nice changes and additions….

The first change users will probably recognize is enhanced search functionalities when clicking “Open A Constituent” from the Constituent area in Records found along the main left menu bar.
There is now the ability to find a constituent by searching on the email address, which can serve as an excellent unique identifier.
Other new search fields include:
---Middle Name
---Suffix
---Phone number
---And a text box to search on Spouse Name – in the previous version of Raiser’s Edge, this option was merely a check-box, which did not provide the same degree of search capabilities.

Found within this search screen is also a new check-box for “Enhanced Search” which provides the opportunity to search for a constituent based on similar spelling and sounding names to more easily identify potential constituents already in the system regardless of misspellings or typos. Users familiar with the previous version of Raiser’s Edge will notice a more in-depth search is returned on Constituents with similar names and address information.

One of the best new features found in version 7.92 is within the query section. Users now have the functionality to create what are known as “Query Lists”. This allows the user to very easily add or remove one or more specific constituents from any given query without manipulating or changing the original query criteria or results. These query lists can then be saved as a new query from which the user can create exports and mail merges. This will make working with queries – particularly mailing queries – much easier and ensure more accuracy with less manual manipulation required outside of Raiser’s Edge.

Also, in the Export area of Raiser’s Edge, the latest version provides the opportunity to create folders in which to save and sort Exports in a similar fashion to how you can save and sort queries into specific folders. In this way, saved exports are easily identified, located and opened for repeated use.

For those organizations that have the optional Events module installed, Raiser’s Edge has introduced a much easier method of marking people as “Attended” to any given event. Previously, users would generally have to manually update the attended checkbox found within the participant record by opening each individual participant record and marking them as attended one at a time. In this latest version of Raiser’s Edge, users can now mark participants as attended directly from the Participants tab without having to open each individual participant record. This should save your event management team a tremendous amount of time and manual work.

There is a new feature found in Raiser’s Edge version 7.92 called Giving Score through which you can have Blackbaud analyze your data and provide a giving score to your constituents based on their giving history and current wealth. Analyzing the constituents and populating these Giving Scores can also be done “in-house” by your organization.
There is now a giving score menu accessed from the bottom of the Constituent record defaulted to contain the following four options:

VIP
Fan
Long-Shot
Acquaintance

You may choose to define each of these to meet your own organization’s unique needs and goals, though Blackbaud does provide standard definitions for each as provided on the Blackbaud website:

VIP: High likelihood to give & high capacity to give.
This group will include your major gift prospects and your high end donors and is used to represent those constituents that have the highest likelihood to give large gifts as well as having the financial wherewithal – ie capacity – to donate large gifts over an extended period of time.

FAN: High likelihood to give & low capacity to give.
This group generally consists of those constituents that have a deep affiliation with your organization and the sorts of things your organization supports, however they do not possess the financial capacity to give large gifts on a regular basis. They may include constituents that donate regularly, such as monthly or yearly, but the donations generally tend to be a much smaller amount than the VIPs. This may also include non-donors whom you wish to solicit for that first time gift.

Long Shot: Low likelihood to give & high capacity to give.
This group generally includes very wealthy constituents that have a high giving capacity but who do not feel that tight affiliation with your organization or the things your organization supports.

Acquaintance: Low likelihood to give & low capacity to give.
These constituents have the least financial capability to give and are also the least likely to give as they do not feel that affiliation or relationship with your organization or the things your organization supports.

Furthermore, with version 7.92, an enhancement is found in the Dashboard area of Raiser’s Edge with the ability to create new Dashboards based on the Giving Score. There is also new query functionality to be found based on Giving Score as well.

Also, in conjunction with the Giving Score, a new tab now appears on the Constituent record called “Ratings”. This can be based on the Giving Score and can help your organization with prospect moves management by identifying those constituents that are most likely to give a large gift based on, as noted above:
A) Their financial capacity to give both today and in the future, and
B) The relationship or the affiliation that the Constituent has for your organization and the kinds of things your organization supports.

Organizations that are currently using the optional Prospect module to track potential key donors and moves management strategies – ie stewardship – may find that these new enhancements in the latest version of Raiser’s Edge fully provide for their needs. To help you evaluate whether the additional investment in the Prospect tab is worthwhile for your organization given the new features in version 7.92, please reach out to us at RESolutionsTECH Inc.
We can always help you evaluate and determine which of the optional modules -- Prospect, Honor/Memorial, Events, Membership and Volunteer -- are most valuable for your organization given the required investment for each.

A change that may not be noticed by everyday users but will impact administrative functionality is the duplicate search. In previous versions of Raiser’s Edge, a user with administrative and configuration rights could set the duplicate search criteria in the Config section -- for example Last Name, First Name and City -- and then run a duplicate report from the Admin section.
In version 7.92, there is no longer the need to set the criteria and that option has been removed from the Config section. There is now a new enhanced search algorithm built into Raiser’s Edge that automatically searches on name, address, phone number and email to find potential duplicates.
However, after the initial release of version 7.92 this functionality was not working properly. Blackbaud has since released patch 6 which can be downloaded from their website and this has fixed the issues that existed in the duplicate search.
Within the Admin section there is still found a Duplicate Constituent Report. This report has been enhanced with additional information to help your organization identify and manage the potential duplicate constituent records in Raiser’s Edge.

There are also upgrades that have improved the security features to the Blackbaud Payment Service to account for possible disruptions in internet connectivity and increase security when transmitting sensitive and confidential financial information. For those organizations that use this service, there is greater reliability and credit card and merchant account information is stored in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Overall, the enhancements and features found in version 7.92 represent a positive move forward. If your organization has not yet upgraded to the current version, it is recommended that you do so. If you have any technical questions or concerns regarding the latest version of Raiser’s Edge, please feel free to reach out to us at sales@resolutionstech.com
We are always here to answer your questions and address your needs.

RESolutionsTECH Inc.
P.O. Box 1975
Kingston Ontario
K7L 5J7
Canada

613-539-9830
www.resolutionstech.com